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Comparisons of peacebuilding with historic practices of imperialism are common, but these comparisons have sustained a hegemonic antagonism between humanitarian and imperialist interpretations of international peace intervention. This article argues that this common framing externalises the problem of intervention, romanticises local resistance, and forecloses to investigation the articulation between militarised peace practices and transnational capitalist relations. To do so, the article analyses the case of Francophone Africa, thus providing a context that has been left unexplored in peacebuilding debates. By bringing back in the historicity of particular Franco-African imperial experiences into peacebuilding research, the article reveals the militarisation of politics, transnational elite networks, and the dominant intellectual predispositions that work to reproduce the legitimacy of hegemonic practices of 'peace' interventionism. In the last section, the article analyses the debates over the UN-French 2011 intervention in Cô te d'Ivoire to reveal the connections between the ethics of humanitarian interventions and the political economy of imperialism. The article concludes that the imperial legacy of peacebuilding is found in old capabilities, new organising logics, and specific practices and power relations and that to focus on the humanitarian-imperialist antagonism caricatures the relationships between 'local ' and 'international' actors. This article discusses the imperial legacy of international peacebuilding in the context of academic comparisons between imperialism and peacebuilding. To do so, it examines the case of Francophone Africa where France plays a key role in international peace intervention. Where comparisons between imperialism and peacebuilding are made, the British Empire is the common point of reference. The context of Francophone Africa and France-Africa security relations is one that is typically left unexplored in peacebuilding deliberations. Certainly, recent French military deployments in Cô te 607 * I thank Tony Chafer, William Crumplin, Geneviève Parent, Michael Pugh and the three anonymous reviewers of the Review of International Studies for their comments, support, and encouragement in writing and improving this article, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support.

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